Method Man Huffington Post Live Interview

The Department of Justice’s recent report exposing racial discrimination on behalf of Ferguson, Missouri’s police department may have been a surprise to some — but rapper Method Man says the 102-page document is “common knowledge” to residents in America.

During a Thursday appearance on MSNBC’s “NewsNation,” the fellow Wu-Tang Clan member blamed the DOJ’s damning report as a contributing factor to the shooting of two local police officers outside the Ferguson Police Department on Thursday.

“With this thing that just happened in Ferguson with the two officers, sad. Very sad,” the Staten Island-native admitted to host Tamron Hall. “I hate to say that the [DOJ] report kind of played into this, and these things shouldn’t be happening, but you reap what you sow in a sense.”

“If that FBI report would’ve never came out…and the things about, basically paying the city by giving people tickets…that is incredible insane. But we knew this already. This is common knowledge in the ghetto.”

The 44-year-old also appeared on HuffPost Live this week to share additional candid thoughts on race, policing and the death of Eric Garner. In doing so, he recalled his experiences growing up and the interactions he had with police officers, some of which weren’t always negative.

“There were a few of them. They weren’t ball-breakers. These are guys that were from the community, who grew up in Staten Island,” he said during the interview. “A lot of times, what people fail to understand is, the cops are just as afraid as we are to be in those areas.”